Templates

Upload a file and place fields, exactly as for a document, or turn a document you have already prepared into a template: its recipients become roles named after those people, its fields keep their places, and any values are left behind. Anyone in the workspace may use a template. Who may change it is up to its creator, admins and owners: everyone, or only those three.

Swapping the file later keeps every field that still has a page to sit on and tells you which ones did not. Archiving a template takes it out of the way without breaking anything already sent from it; it can be restored or duplicated at any time.

Unsaved template edits use the same 24-hour device recovery as document drafts. Review recovered changes before restoring; a newer saved template stays protected.

Each role is a signer or receives a copy, and has a place in the signing order. When you use the template you name the person for each role. A role can instead be pinned to one person, name and email, and then needs no input: your own signature on every offer letter, or the landlord on every lease. Role names must be unique within a template.

A template can carry its own schedule: how long its documents stay open, from 7 to 90 days, and when signers are reminded, including never. Every document made from it starts that way, whether it comes from the app, a public link, a bulk send, the API or an agent. Whoever sends a document can still change its schedule before sending, and that never alters the template. A template with no schedule of its own uses the usual one: 30 days, with reminders on day 3 and day 7.

A text, number, date, dropdown or checkbox field in a template can carry a default value, and can be filled in when the template is used: in the app, by the API, or by an agent. The API names a field by its label. A value handed in beats the default; both are limited to 2,000 characters. A number must read as one, and a dropdown’s value must be one of its choices, in any capitals; one that is not is refused with the reason, and a bulk send shows it against its row before anything goes out. Signature and initials fields are never prefilled: only the signer makes those. Text and date defaults and the title pattern accept merge tags, resolved when the document is created; a tag that matches nothing becomes empty, and a raw tag never reaches a signer.

The default title is the template’s name. A pattern such as the one below gives each document its own:

Lease: {{role.Tenant.name}}, {{date}}

A template can have one public link, off until you turn it on. A visitor who opens it gives their name and email and plays one signer role; every other role must be pinned to a person, so nothing about the visitor is ever guessed. The link is a token and nothing else: no workspace, template or document id is in it.

On the Business plan, a spreadsheet and a template make one document per row. You map columns to roles and fields, review what would go wrong before anything is sent, and can look at row one as a real draft first. Every row is idempotent on its document, so a retry never sends anyone twice, and a row that fails records why while the rest carry on. The results come back as your original columns with a status, a signed date and a link per row, and every signed PDF can be fetched as one zip. In messages and defaults, {{row.Column}} reads a cell by its header.

A policy everyone acknowledges each year, such as the employee handbook or a code of conduct, goes again by itself. Tick Send again every year on a batch, before or after it goes. Two weeks before the anniversary of the day it went, next year’s is made ready with the same template, columns and message, and whoever set it up is emailed the day and how many people it goes to.

Until that day, replace the list with that year’s spreadsheet, so leavers drop off and new starters are on it; change the message; or stop it, which ends the yearly send. If nothing changes, it goes on the day as if you had pressed Send, and waits for approval first where your sends do. If it cannot go, say because nobody on the list has a valid email address, it stays a draft and you are told why. Each year’s comes round again a year after it goes, until you untick it.

Sending from a template is one API call: name the people for each role, pass any prefill, and say whether to send. The API reference shows it in curl, TypeScript and Python, filled in with your own template.